Abstract

This paper provides a comprehensive modeling approach for simulation of electronic charge transport in excitonic solar cells with organic and organic/inorganic structures. Interaction of energy carrying particles (electrons, holes, singlet excitons, and triplet excitons) with each other and their transformation in the bulk of the donor and acceptor media as well as the donor/acceptor interfaces are incorporated in form of coupling matrices into the continuity equations and interface boundary conditions. As a case study, the model is applied to simulate an organic bilayer photovoltaic (PV)device to quantify the effects of photo generation, recombination coefficient, carrier mobility, and electrode work function on its PV characteristics. The study proves that electron-hole recombination at the donor/acceptor interface is the dominant mechanism that limits open circuit voltage of the device.

Received 20 April 2013Accepted 18 June 2013Published online 08 July 2013

Acknowledgments:

This material was based upon the research work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant No. 1102356, NSF/EPSCoR Grant No. 0903804, and by the State of South Dakota. The authors would like to thank Dr. Brian Moore for the technical support and access to Supercomputing Facility at the South Dakota State University.